George Orwell once analyzed a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Felix Randal,” pointing out the extent to which it was a “Saxon” poem. Orwell mentions that “English is a mixture of several languages, but mainly Saxon and Norman French, and to this day [the 1940s], in the country districts, there is a class distinction between the two. Many agricultural labourers speak almost pure Saxon.” Hopkins’ own language is very Saxon, which is appropriate, because he is trying to evoke a dying way of life, “the old Saxon village community,” fading away due to industrialization.
The type of plain speech employed by Hopkins was in some sense an invention, that of a 19th-century poet imitating older poetry. Reviving old language is something modern writers like to do. Sometimes it was done for ideological reasons: consider Hugh MacDiarmid’s “synthetic Scots,” part of a nationalistic project to revive Scottish literature, by drawing on the old literary language of Scotland, which predominated before the Act of Union (1707) dethroned it in favor of English. Sometimes the reasons are aesthetic. Burgess’ own novel Nothing Like the Sun is a good example of this – a reconstruction of the life of Shakespeare written in the author’s own re-creation of Shakespearean English. It’s a virtuoso performance, even if Shakespeare probably wouldn’t have recognized it as his own kind of speech.
In this regard, “new old” language resembles the neoclassicalism of 20th-century composers like Stravinsky and Hindemith. You can revive the old structures and echo the old sounds, but there is no point trying to recreate them exactly, since it’s impossible to get the sound of later music out of your ears. In both literature and music, imitating the past is a means to an end; it’s not a goal in and of itself.
Since I mentioned music, one thing that preserves the old language in a modern setting is folk music. The modern folk revivals, especially in Britain and Ireland, brought this old language to a new audience. Because they’re meant to be sung, you can treat the old texts in a variety of ways, effectively bringing them up to date without altering the language at all.
Let’s look at the fate of one song, attested from the 17th century, but undoubtedly centuries older than that: “A Lyke-Wake Dirge.” This song tells of the passage of a soul after death; it dates from the Christian period, but according to people who know about these things, incorporates some pre-Christian elements. As far as I can tell, the dirge contains hardly any non-Germanic words – it’s “Saxon” in the same sense as Hopkins’ poem, but it’s the real thing, not a recreation. The text is not entirely settled either: should we say “fire and fleet” or “fire and sleet”?
And here we come back to Igor Stravinsky. He set this song as part of his Cantata on old English texts, but did something unusual with it: he broke it up, interpolating other songs between the verses. The dirge thus serves as a kind of framing device for the whole piece. Stravinsky’s setting dates from 1952 and reflects his growing interest in early music. It is also written in a modernist mid-20th century style, making partial use of serial procedures. It looks backward and forward at the same time.
It’s the same text, but nothing could sound more different from Stravinsky’s cool modernism than The Young Tradition. Two guys and a girl, with no instruments, singing in a style that sounds like it comes straight from Chaucer’s time: what could be more authentic than this? You can practically smell the hay and horse dung in this one. The Young Tradition’s version dates from 1965, a time when the folk music revival on both sides of the Atlantic was in full bloom. This take by Pentangle, from their album Basket of Light, was recorded in 1969, when folk was turning into folk rock. This is a polished version, redolent of old churches lit by candles and cemeteries at twilight.
And that’s just scratching the surface: I merely chose the versions I happened to have lying around the house.**
*You can find Burgess’ quote here, embedded in an article in the Spanish newspaper El País. Since I haven’t actually read it, I don’t know why it’s called Jesus era escocés (“Jesus was Scottish”).
**Here’s a fun non-English example: the German folk rock band Ougenweide, with their take on the Merseburg Charms, which are attested as early as the 9th century.